The families of the victims that were murdered in the racially-motivated shooting at a Dollar Tree in Florida earlier this year recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the chain store.
Filed in the state’s court, the families are accusing Dollar General of not taking necessary steps and precautions to guarantee customers and employees safety.
The lawsuit also named the parents of gunman, Ryan Palmeter, for their inaction in protecting the public from the “reasonably foreseeable” acts that their son would carry out. Reported by ABC, pictures included as part of the lawsuit are of his room which showed clear signs of an “obsession regarding firearms and violence,” per the lawsuit.
On Aug. 26, 29-year-old Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 19-year-old employee Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr. and 52-year-old Angela Michelle Carr were murdered after Palmeter went into the store with multiple handguns in an 11-minute attack.
Upon the police reponse arriving to the scene, Palmeter committed suicide, according to officials.
Those investigating the shooting affirmed that the shooting was racially-motivated. Diaries discovered at his home contained hateful language such as slurs.
“Angela Carr, AJ Laguerre Jr., and Jerrald Gallion’s lives mattered,” wrote the representative of the families, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, in a post published on X. “On behalf of their families, we intend to seek JUSTICE through the filing of a lawsuit of their senseless killings by a racially-motivated mass shooter in a Jacksonville Dollar General.”
In Buffalo, New York, a similar attack at a Tops grocery store took the lives of 10 Black people that were targeted by white supremacist Payton Gendron.
In August of this year, the family members of those murdered as well as 17 survivors filed legal action against social media sites, including YouTube and Reddit, alongside their parent companies Alphabet Inc. and Google.
According to the lawsuit, the online platforms and their algorithms promoted extremist content that Gendron would consume as he planned the shooting for three months.
The lawsuit brought forth by the families of the late victims Heyward Patterson, Andre Mackniel and Katherine Massey also accused Mean Arms LLC of falsely advertising a magazine lock which can easily be removed to make the purchase of the weapon legal in the state of New York.
The court case was heard this Thursday in Buffalo with attorney John Elmore representing the families in the lawsuit. A final decision is expected to be made in January.
“To prevent mass shootings [and] to stop manufacturers of weapons or weapon components who are irresponsible — social media platforms that are irresponsible, that are radicalizing people and this individual to commit violence,” said Elmore per Spectrum News. “It’s got to stop and that’s why we’re here.”
